ORIGIN

1959 Renault Dauphine

This 1959 Renault Dauphine is not currently running after eight years of storage, but did receive new paint and interior a year before being put away. No mention of rust is made, but it is a California car said to have a “solid body.” Find it for sale here on Craigslist for $3,000 in Southern California.

The only close memory I have of a Dauphine is, when the landlord pulled one of these out of the garage we were about to rent from him for our dilapidated Mercedes 220S. He could not understand why our car was worth more than his (about the same year). That car was his version of a classic car. That’s as close as it got and I usually don’t pass up on anything unusual…. or maybe the other times seeing these cars parked. But of all the times I saw one of these in places like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, France or the US I have maybe seen one of them actually move and drive on it’s own………….

That’s the kind of plain speaking we need more of around here. A lot of semi-worthy cars are being offered at funny money, and although the days of the $150 VW or the legendary Free Berlina have up and left us, some tarted-up wreck whose Condition 1 worth barely makes it into five figures being flogged for four needs to have its pretensions called. Ask the newish owner of a three-figure Alfetta GT who once paid over twice that for a Sprint GT made mostly of rust and Bondo.

~ @ Will Owen, my old friend- excuse me, my long time friend, mr. Eberline; wrote today to say he suffered a mild case of nostalgia when he tuned into BaT this morning and confirmed Odball Otos suspicions, saying, ‘Scot, I gotta admit, that black one on BaT sort of hit me- I actually called on it- the guy doesn’t want to get realistic about the price… at $800, with all it’s needs, it’d be about right. It’s actually worse than it looks. Heck, BRAND NEW, it was worse than it looked!’ that’s entertainment, folks.

My Uncle was a Renault dealer in Ct and my father foolishly bought an orange 59 against my expert 16 year old advice.:) boy did he regret it. Caused friction in the family. Just an unreliable piece of junk. Merde as they say in France.

Hey, Varjak, you know us old guys – telling the same damn jokes over and over.

This needs to go to someone who’ll fix it up and use it; I’m just worried that the guy who reported its supposed defects is on the money and it winds up in the hands of someone who finds himself saddled with a project he’s not prepared to pay for. I can think of several cars that could suck me into that very trap, including one that did.

I’m of two minds. Sure these are reviled by many; but as a BaT car, it kind of fits in. It’s not a basket-case; but it’s not a pristine example either. For the right person, it could be fixed up and be an interesting little car. Not my choice; but I can ‘see’ it for someone.

Last time I drove one of these, a good ten years after my previous experience, I was surprised at how stodgy and unresponsive it felt. It shared with the AMC Metropolitan the strange quality of feeling as though it were twice its actual size and weight. Of course there’d been a couple of Minis in the meantime …

While I have fond memories of most of the cars I drove in my relative youth, there are a few that I’m not at all interested in driving extensively again, though I’ll happily take anything around the block. This is one of those.

I had a ’58 for a short while when I was in High School. There was a hole in the rear bumper where you could insert the jack handle from the scissor jack and stick it in the fly wheel and crank start it. I did that for a while until I lost the jack handle. Since I lived on a level street, I would start it by turning the key on, putting it in second, then getting behind it and rocking it until I got it rolling. It would go: putt…putt putt…and then take off at an idle and I’d run around and jump in.

Bought 2 for $25 around ’69 in Atlanta, both parts cars. After awhile one was running, the other abandoned on-street. No switches or speedo worked so a line of Radio Shack toggle switches were installed in the dash. It took the correct combination of three switches to start with another hooked up as a kill switch to shut-off. Great fun in a large snow-covered parking lot learning (very) low speed skid correction. No heat, no radio, max speed around 45-50 mph.

I am local if somebody would like a PPI. I also have a trailer and a yard you can store the car in until you can have a shipper pick it up. I suppose you would have to ask the guys who run this site how to get ahold of me.

Now if the guys who run this site don’t like what I just posted, feel free to nuke it.

I assume the positive comments must have more to do with the nostalgia for the experiences people had with the car rather than now great these cars were or are. Have people forgotten that Renault apologized officially for foisting this model on the world?

I paid $50 for mine in about 1969, hoping to make a dune buggy out of it (not old enough yet for a driver’s license). I was ignorant of the term “unibody” at that tender age, so when I cut off the roof, the body flexed — unfortunately far worse than a stock Renault Caravelle would under normal circumstances — and the steering wheel landed on the driver seat. No doubt rust holes in the footwell under the floor mats subtracted significantly from whatever rigidity the floorpan had to start with. I used leftover lumber to hold the stub of the A-post away from the rear door catch to make it possible to drive it, although a speed bump taken too quickly would knock out the supports and put the steering wheel in my lap again. It was fun to drive with no doors, fenders, trunk cover, engine cover, and roof (which five friends and I used for sliding down a hill together in the snow behind my house) as long as kept to smooth paved roads. When we got it home, I found that the poor abused thing had one brake disconnected, a frozen shock absorber, a non-working shock, major toe-out indicated by the worn front tires, and the engine pumped a quart of oil through the road draft tube every 15 minutes, which I would catch in an old oil can and recycle every 15 minutes.

My dad bought one of these for me back in 1966, we were living in North western Ontario. The good points very good in the snow, fairly reliable. The lows, poor heaters especially when the temperature dipped below freezing. Plastic door handles broke, replaced with 4″ spikes. Mine was a 3 speed manual and the shifter was very sloppy. Memories not all good.

I worked in a foreign car repair shop on the late 60’s. One of these rolled in with needs including a new starter. Seem to remember needing a three foot extension for my socket to reach one of the starter bolts.

Three feet you say…had to run it through the grill to reach it

Strange car, if there was two ways to do something, these cars seemed to do it differently

In my experience, very very few people park a running car and leave it for years. Servicemembers deploying – yes, an occasional move to another coast or off to college – yes, death – yes, otherwise it just doesn’t happen. 99% of people park these because they don’t run.

As much as I like Dauphines – and I have owned several – with the PPI feedback from Otos it doesn’t sound like this is the one to buy. They are never worth much money, so buy the very best least rusty one that you can get. On Dauphine stories, two memories stand out to me. The good one was when I had visited the local IKEA and stumbled across 5 kitchen tables where the legs were missing for sale for something like 50 cents each. As I was to build a long work bench, this was a great opportunity so I bought all 5 only to come out to the parking lot realizing that I had been driving the Dauphine there and not my Mercedes Wagon. I somehow managed to take passenger seat and rear seat out and get all 5 tables inside the car driving home with the passenger seat in my lap. The bad memory was when the same Dauphine suddenly died on me in the main tunnel under the Sodermalm island in Stockholm in very heavy traffic. There are no shoulders, but I pulled over as far as I could, but getting out and being back there working to get the engine going with trucks passing with inches to spare was not a good feeling. Turned out the fuel pump had died, but it would strangely work using the little hand lever so after pumping the hand lever for a while it got me enough gas to get out from the tunnel and roll down the first exit ramp to a much safer place to stand. Made it to the office after only about 20 pumping stops and miraculously enough found a suitable Renault 4 fuel pump on the shelves at the nearest auto parts store so the problem was easily rectified once I had made it out from that tunnel alive.

A friend of mine told me he had gotten a letter from his brother in the sixties while he was stationed in Vietnam that told him “The Dauphine broke down and we have it in the barn, will work on it after the crop is in”. The next letter he got told him “While working on the Dauphine we knocked over the torch setting the combine, cotton picker and the barn on fire! Luckily the Dauphine was the first thing to burn”. Kinda how I feel about these cars.

@ nathan r: They were issued in France in Département 92, Hauts de Seine, in the southwest of Paris. This is the location where most Dauphines were built. The “TT” part of the license number is for Transit Temporaire, these are generally called “tourist plates”. They were issued to foreigners who picked up cars on a European Delivery program. But these plates were not assigned to this car; they appear to have been issued in 1986.

Nothing wrong with “ran when parked” comment, it’s another way of saying it was a running/driving car the day it was stored as opposed to being taken off the road because it “broke down” or was no longer driveable. I bought a Bugeye Sprite that was not running, the owner told me the car cut out one day and had to be towed home. That car was “not running when parked”.

But what always baffles me is why people try to sell an otherwise nice car like this without getting it running first. It doesn’t take much..charge the battery and squirt some starter fluid in it. If the gas is old, siphon it out with a $5 hand pump. You get a lot more $ for a car that “runs and drives”.

So heres a heads up.i went to see this car a couple of months ago.The results of my ppi are; Paint is worse than it looks,they must of poured something over it to make it shine. So itll need paint for sure. Interior looks presentable in the photos,but its shot.sundried,cracked.Needs to be redone. Engine looked ok and it turns over,oil looked fine so chances are it wil run. The problem is the rust.all the floorboards are gone,meaning you can step thru the wholes. Take it as a total restoration project. 1000$ maybe,3k definetly not. Stored for 8 years?last time they said 10 years.And if you leave a car outside in the baking sun thats not really storing it. Things that i liked is that the body is straight,all the chrome bits and pieces are there and of course the euro plates. Thanks for reading,just wanted to give a heads up before you wire any money. Just saying there are running and driving examples for 4k. Cheers

~ can’t resist repeating; (Fun fact: The Dauphine was originally to be named the Corvette. The name Renault settled on is the female form of “dauphin,” a French royal title.) makes ya think, don’t it?

and; (from BaTs most recent Dauphine post; JUN 12. Don’t Say Dolphin) william eberline, June 30, 2012 . I learned to drive in one in 1963! Memories: The endearing way it would shimmy while accelerating between 50-55mph, the foot-long shift throws on the (early) 3-speed transmission, and the fact that I could out-drag any Beetle in town…Scot and I managed to roll it into a lamp post (I was distracted- she was a FOX!) which modified the front bumper, and Iowa winters modified the floor- I called the hole my emergency brake. It was easy for 1 person to get it rolling, jump in, and pop the clutch. Wonder how I survived my youth? – abnormale, June 30, 2012 @william eberline. I, too, grew up in Iowa driving a Dauphine as my first car and the experience was a very useful one as the car provided every combination of malfunction possible, and the problem solving opportunities were endless. Things could only get better from that point onward.

scot, June 30, 2012 ~ @ abnormale, i knew there were other Renaults in Iowa back in the ’60s besides those Bill’s mom owned. we would sneak out in the middle of the night, quietly roll the Dauphine from the yard to the street, pop the clutch and we were off. smacking the pole was just a part of the great adventure. what age were we, 14 maybe? if Billy says he got distracted she was definitely a FOX! mrs. Eberline never suspected a thing. he tells me she actually owned two. glutton for punishment or extreme poverty, i loved that little car. had much more personality than my mom’s pink Rambler. –